Getting Gritty vs. Opting Out

Butterball and I had a jump lesson on Tuesday. It was a really fun course set around a grid down the middle of the arena. The grid was three bounce crossrails, one stride vertical, two stride oxer. Butterball and I hadn't jumped since our cross country school, so I was a little rusty. This is apparent in the video Holly was kind enough to take. 

This was our first or second go through of one version of the course and features my miss as well as a position fault that JT set to work fixing immediately after. For whatever reason I was wanting to pull back with my hands through the grid, so it was a great place to work on hands down, shoulders up. She had me grabbing mane through it to emphasize the hands down and staying down. 

We did a few different courses. After the one in the video she put a couple of jumps up, but left the skinny, the vertical in the grid, and the oxer that was the start of the five stride line all relatively small. We then did them as an angled line across the diagonal, skinny, angled three strides to the XX vertical, angled four strides to the oxer (the blue dashed path in my beautifully created course above). Butterball was totally game and once I closed my leg and showed him the line across to the vertical he was all business about it. Like wedges, Ben and I quite enjoyed the angled lines, so it was fun to try it on BB. I think having a very specific point to ride to helps me ride better than the general flat face of a jump (or angled face of a corner LOL). 

There were a few cones distributed throughout the course to encourage USING the ring and not cutting corners. There were two at the start of the grid, two at the end, and one at the end of the 5 stride to 1 stride line. They were honestly more helpful than I'd like to admit, although both BB and the other horse did take out one at the end of the gymnastic line. You'd think that saying go straight after would get us to do the same thing, but the visual of the cones was REALLY helpful. 

We finished up with a few more trips through the grid. JT ended up adding wedge shaped placing poles to the oxer and putting the XX filler as angled directives to the vertical since BB and the other horse we were jumping with were wanting to wiggle through the line. Each time through I was working on hands DOWN into the neck, grabbing mane, and staying tall with my shoulders. The final oxer height was substantial, I want to say 3'6", but honestly it might've just been 3'3" and I haven't seen that height in a while. BB took a look at it and wiggled through the bounces and I didn't fix it. He wiggled over the vertical and then ducked out of the oxer. Honestly I might have even given a right tug on the rein to turn him out of it. JT had us turn back in, one tap, and then let him settle and take a look at it. She told me to get gritty, and I reasoned in my head she'd never asked us to do anything we (BB or any other horse!) aren't capable of. So I kicked him straight through the first few fences the next go round and he jumped it great. We did it one more time and WOW. He can seriously jump. It is a whole new feeling at this height and will take some work to stop feeling jumped out of the tack. His whole jump, from knees to back to hind end is just incredible. I wish I had video of that trip through. 

Since he had a long conditioning ride Monday and a jump lesson Tuesday, Wednesday was our bareback hack day. I am trying to use the ditches as hills, which is kinda amusing. We serpentine back and forth up and down across them. They mowed the whole shoulder of the quiet road the barn is on, so now I can see where there are trash and holes to avoid, which is great. 

The camera minimizes the slope as usual, but it is reasonably steep in a few portions, just lacking in distance lol. But still, better than nothing?? 

Pesky cut is FINALLY healed up so it's just a scar at this point. I'm still putting Wound Wonder on it daily to try to minimize scarring so it won't be a spot where he wants to get rubbed. 

It is CRAZY to me how good his feet are - the holes from the prior set of shoes are just... holes... the wall hasn't chipped or torn up or anything... 

Meeting the weanling gang. Ben was pretty rude to them, but Butterball was just as sweet as could be